"Grunge" photos: Faux or legitimate art?

[PhotoDon]

Lately, I’ve noticed people offering “grunge” photos that look like an old photo that was poorly stored and displayed. They appear to have cracks, stains, debris. Some people think this looks “antique.”

I spent years as a film photographer fighting blemishes, from subjecting the film to a PhotoFlo rinse to ward off water marks to cleaning the enlarger components to eliminate any dust and finally learning how to use spotting ink to cover those annoying white spots dust or a stray hair leave. So, when I see people deliberately creating such imperfections, it drives me nuts and ruins the picture.

I personally put this in the same category as selective color, using the lens blur filter to create shallow depth of field and bad composites. Is this just me being a curmudgeon, or is this a new tool in the fauxtographer’s kit?

[emf]

I think it depends who’s doing it. I’m quite interested in this subject and remember reading an article about people going in for this low fi/grungey look as a bit of a backlash from the near ‘perfect’ (yeah right!) images that digital produces.

I think film is a lot more hands on and it’s that that still has an appeal to people and it’s that aesthetic that they are trying to emulate or recapture.

It’s interesting though as this has been happening almost since the start of photog, with togs like Edward Steichen using ‘grungey’ techniques and blur etc.  in order to produce a more ‘legitimate’ art form as they believed photography, as it was, was too mechanical and needed to be more ‘hand crafted’ for it to be an acceptable art form.

Sorry to go on, but I’m just really interested in this 🙂

[cameraclicker]

You left out lomography and apps that add noise (grain).   Perhaps I’m another curmudgeon but the photos that stand out for me are the ones that are clean and beautiful, I have no desire to look at something made to look worse than it could.

[Brownie]

I agree, I think people are attracted to the aesthetic that these images bring, a nostalgia that makes them look more than just a picture of their house or whatever. It makes it feel like it has more significance, perhaps.  the materials involved in making a photograph are just as important to consider as the subject matter. Photographers like Sally Mann utilize the large format camera and monochrome film to set another layer in the photographs by embracing the aesthetics of the large format cameras.

[PhotoDon]

Grunge goes beyond trying to capture the look and feel of film. It’s more the look and feel of a photo that’s been left uncovered in an attic and the emulsion gets cracked, chipped, stained etc. And don’t start me on Lomo and these people who think light leaks are artistic.

[emf]

Lol – I guess if you spend your life trying to avoid such things it seems a bit weird that others purposely try to get them. It has become quite trendy, along with the whole instagram thing.

I think though, for some, it boils down to a matter of taste and background maybe. For example, my background is painting and printmaking, mediums in which you learn to enjoy exploit the ‘happy little accidents’. When I started darkroom photography, I was interested in the happy little accidents – like when the chemicals were a bit exhausted or things weren’t properly fixed and the prints (mono) would go pinkish or silvery.

One thing I really hate though is fake film frames/edges – on digital images!

[alexandra]

I find that many photographers who are prone to otherwise producing uninteresting photos use this whole look to cover up their lack of skills. So no, I am not a fan of this most of the time at least. It would be a lie to say I have never done this as an experiment in attempt to make an otherwise boring photo more interesting, but I would never feature this work amongst my professional shots.
When it comes to instagram, I feel like the filters they put together do a good job fixing poor lighting conditions, and blowing out skin tones in order to cover up imperfections and bad lighting/shadows on the face. Two of the filters (Hudson and Toaster) also contain mild scratches. This makes sense if all you’ve got is your phone, and don’t want to carry around studio lighting with you all day in case there happens to a situation that calls for a taking a snapshot. Again, I find that it would be totally wrong to edit someone’s wedding with instagram, but I think that whole app/website is great for sharing photos, and for correcting fun snapshots taken with one’s phone.

[nesgran]

I think it is one of those looks that will go and look really rubbish in a couple of years. I can’t really understand why you’d want to do it to be honest, same with overlaying a texture on an otherwise boring shot of a flower.

[Brownie]

I do agree, It’s an easy way to add interest to an otherwise uninteresting photograph.

[stef]

I’m not a fan of edits that either distract or detract from an image. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like grunge or filters of some sort, or even certain tilty angles as long as they add to the image.

 

I don’t mind textures done artistically. Textures are something that painters have, so why not photographers? I have no issue when a photographer adds some texture into his work, provided that’s not the only thing that makes it interesting. If it adds to the work, great. If that’s all it is, however, not so great.

 

As an aside, I will often shoot interesting textures I come across. Walls, wood, blocks, clouds, strange wind-blown shapes in dirt, etc. I’ve developed my own library of them.

[fstopper89]

I have mixed feelings on this. Mainly speaking on textures. There are some really pretty textures to use, and I have taken an otherwise average flower photo and added a texture to give it more interest. I mean, my photos had nice composition and good exposure. it’s more for a pretty background photo, not really a true work of art. I follow some photogs on Flickr who use textures all the time. Some have really average scenes where they added a texture and people think it’s amazing. The photos are nice, but not awesome without the texture. It does make it more like a painting though. As for Instagram, and another app I use called Pixlr-Matic, their only purpose is to dress up a crappy phone snapshot to make it more appealing and I like that- but if someone is passing that off as professional work, they should be shot.

[Author]

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